Category Archives: recipes

What is bacon jam, you ask? It is heaven. It is delicious, smoky, salty spreadable bacon in a bath of caramelized onion and garlic goodness. My roommates say the end product smells like barbecue sauce, but this isway better than barbecue sauce.

Bacon Jam

The last time I made bacon jam, I had no idea how to eat/use it. I served it with cheese and crackers at a dinner party and it was gone in minutes. I’m not joking; this stuff is like crack. That was in November, and friends have been bugging me for months to make it again. So you’ve been warned: make this jam and you (or your fam/friends) might turn into an addict.

Bacon Jam

Anyway, eating crackers with bacon jam is fine and dandy, but I don’t think that simplicity allows the jam to live up to it’s full potential. When I made the jam this time around, I used it in three different recipes–and ohmigodthis shit is good. I totally blindly subscribe to the foodie bacon craze but even sometimes I can admit that bacon doesn’t make everything better. Bacon JAM, however… this really does make everything so much better. Below are the three ways I used the jam (yanno, besides eating it straight off a spoon).

Breakfast: So easy but insanely tasty. I toasted a slice of oatmeal bread, spread bacon jam on top, and topped it with a fried egg. The runny yolk and the little bits of bacon… okay … I can’t even talk about this anymore because I’m salivating all over my keyboard. Just do it. Trust me.

Toast with Fried Egg and Bacon Jam

Lunch: Grilled Cheese with Bacon Jam. Self explanatory, no? Very good, very delicious, very cheesy. I used smoked gouda and fontina cheese. I would eat this for every meal if I didn’t have to squeeze into a bridesmaid dress in a few weeks! Well, also, I’m lactose-intolerant, but whatever, this is too good to give up. The tubby life is both a blessing and a curse.

Grilled Cheese with Bacon Jam

Dinner: I roasted vegetables and chicken thighs and stuffed bacon jam under the skin. SALTY SWEET, people. If you haven’t figured it out… I love salty-sweet flavor combinations. The jam also does a killer job at keeping the thighs moist–not that they need much help anyway.

Roasted Chicken with Bacon Jam

Okay, without further ado, the recipe! Also, I promise my next tubbytuesday post will not have bacon in it. Actually, I can’t promise that, but I will try my hardest. Maybe.

And for your food porn viewing pleasure, this is what two pounds of cooked bacon looks like. YUM. I can hear your arteries clogging from all the way over here!

directions
1. Chop bacon into 1 inch strips. Cook the bacon over medium-high heat until bacon is browned. I did this step in two batches, draining the bacon fat in between. Remove bacon from pan and set aside.
2. Drain all but one tablespoon of bacon fat from the pan and add onions and garlic. Turn the heat down to low-medium and cook until the onions are soft–around 5-10 minutes.
3. Add the remaining ingredients: coffee, apple cider vinegar, maple syrup, brown sugar, mustard, and ground pepper. Turn the heat back up to high and let this mixture come to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, let it boil for about two minutes.
4. Add the bacon and let this simmer for an hour. Feel free to add more coffee or water if it looks like it’s drying out. When the onions have become essentially mush and the liquid becomes more viscous–think more like cold syrup–then it’s done!
5. Let it cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a food processor or blender. Pulse and check frequently–you want it to be spreadable but you still want little bits of bacon-y goodness. Don’t blend it so much that it becomes a thick paste! Store in an airtight container in the fridge.
6. Enjoy! Eat it on everything! It is amazing.

I’m back! I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to post on my blog. Actually, that’s a total and complete lie. I’ve been busy moving back to Philly and finishing up a summer class. But now I’m back and I’m never leaving (that’s another lie, I will most likely forget to blog again).

But ANYWAY. I made bacon sugar cookies. I saw them on @tworedbowls’ instagram and decided I had to make them. She makes hers with sweet corn ice cream, which sounds wickedly delicious. But alas, I have no ice cream maker, so I couldn’t completely replicate her genius ideas.

… I really need to get an ice cream maker.

Bacon Sugar Cookies

If I’m being honest, the bacon-brittle mixture was a pain in my tubby butt. It was delicious and wonderful, but I’m not sure that I’ll make these again. I don’t think I got the sugar to melt at the perfect temperature, so I had problems when it cooled and had to re-melt the entire bacon-y concoction. PLUS do you guys know how hard it is to have bacon (that you can’t eat because it’s covered in a hot caramel that will burn your tastebuds off) in front of you? Meh. No fun.

I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe – one I found at AllRecipes years ago – and subbed out some butter for cooked bacon grease (Yum! And totally great for your arteries!).

Bacon Sugar Cookies

Look, I don’t like to toot my own horn, but these cookies are pretty delicious. They’re salty and sweet. The cookies are soft, but the sugary bacon bits provide a nice texture contrast. I’m a fan. Enjoy!

directionsbacon coating1. Cook bacon until crispy. Reserve fat and coarsely chop bacon. Set aside.
2. Combine chopped bacon, sugar, and water in a small nonstick pan. Cook until caramel brown. Stir often so the sugar does not burn.
3. Once desired color is reached, remove from heat and add baking soda. Pour onto lined (with parchment paper) cookie pan and left to cool.
4. Once cooled, break into pieces and pulse in a blender or food processor until it reaches a grainy, sugary consistency. Set aside.

sugar cookies1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
2. Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl.
3. In a second bowl, cream butter, reserved bacon fat, and sugar until smooth.
4. Add egg and vanilla to butter mixture.
5. Slowly add dry ingredients.
6. Roll rounded teaspoons of dough into balls, cover in bacon coating, and then place onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until cookies are golden. Move to a wire rack to cool (or the sugar might solidify and you’ll have cookies stuck on your cookie sheet! I’m not speaking from experience or anything, though…..).

I don’t think I use coconut enough in baking and I really should! Toasted coconut is one of the simplest cupcake toppings (way easier than candied bacon) but it looks beautiful and tastes delicious!But more importantly, coconut tricks you into thinking you’re kind of sort of eating something healthy. Because it’s technically fruit… No? Just me?

For the crazed chocolate lovers out there, you can also make this cupcake with a chocolate cake… but one of the greatest chocophiles I know told me that these vanilla bean ones are “gems of confectionarianism” so you can’t lose either way!

The recipe calls for cake flour. If you’re anything like me, you probably won’t want to run out to the store just to buy cake flour when you have good old all-purpose flour at home. In that case, substitute your flours. All-purpose flour is denser than cake flour. For every cup of cake flour you need, measure out the same amount of all-purpose flour BUT remove 2 tablespoons of flour before adding it to your mixing bowl. By removing the 2 tablespoons, you’ve decreased the density of the cake flour. Or if you hate doing math/measuring/being lazy, you could just go to the store and spend extra money on the cake flour…

Recipes for the individual components are below. Be sure to let the cupcakes completely cool before stuffing/frosting. To assemble, start by either piping Nutella into each cupcake–I use a #230 piping tip. Be sure to warm up the Nutella a little bit before piping! Alternatively, you can cut out the center of each cupcake and spoon the Nutella into each center. Bonus: extra vanilla cake crumbs! Top with frosting: I literally took a spoon and just plopped the icing on top of each cupcake. It was way easier than piping the icing on! Don’t worry if it looks ugly–the toasted coconut and almonds cover everything up!

directions
1. Preheat oven to 350° and line cupcake pan with liners.
2. Sift together the dry ingredients (flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt).
3. With mixer on low, slowly add butter a few cubes at a time continuing until all butter is incorporated and the mixture resembles coarse sand.
4. Add eggs one at a time on low speed.
5. Measure out milk and add the vanilla beans and extract. Add this mixture until fully combined.
6. Fill liners (about 2/3 full) and bake for 15-20 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

directions
1. Skip this step if you plan on using your frosting the same day. Gelatin stabilizes the whipped cream so you won’t have to deal with a wilted, watery frosting. Add gelatin and water to a small container. After it sets, melt the mixture using the microwave in 5 second intervals until it is a liquid. Set aside to cool.
2. Using a mixer, whip heavy cream until soft peaks form. While mixing, slowly add gelatin mixture.
3. Add powdered sugar until desired sweetness is reached. I usually add around 1/4 cup. Keep in mind that you’ll end up folding this into a sweetened cream-cheese frosting mixture.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together the cream cheese and butter until uniform. Again, add powdered sugar until desired sweetness is reached.
5. Using a spatula, gently fold the whipped cream and coconut into the cream cheese mixture.

Toasted Coconut and Almond Toppingdirections
1. Preheat oven to 300°.
2. Spread 1/2 cup sweetened, shredded coconut and 1/3 cup sliced almonds out on a cookie sheet. Bake for approximately 10-15 minutes until lightly toasted. Be careful, it can go from toasted to burnt very quickly!

I’ve never had a bad donut. It’s fried dough dipped in sugar. You can’t really mess that up. This could be foodie sacrilege to say, but my favorite yeast donuts come from Krispy Kreme. Yeeees, I know there’s probably some bougie donut place that makes them fifty times better without half the preservatives/chemicals/whatever, but just pause for a second: have you ever had one? Have you had one WARM out of the fryer and freshly glazed? Are you drooling? I am.

Glazed & Cinnamon-Sugar Donuts

I set out to replicate my beloved donuts, but the ones I made just aren’t a Krispy Kreme donut. Sigh.Maybe it’s because I used butter instead of shortening? Or maybe I didn’t perfect the glaze? I’m not positive. Don’t get me wrong: the donuts I made are GREAT. They’re light and they’re beautifully glazed and they are best when served hot out of the fryer.

Unglazed and Unsugared!

I won’t stop until I find the perfect recipe that makes the perfect Krispy Kreme-esque donut. Maybe I just have to have a multiple recipe and store bought side-by-side taste test comparison. Yanno. For science. I’ll report back if/when I do find that recipe, but in the meantime, these will still hit the spot!

Donuts

The one clear downside to making donuts vs. buying donuts is the time commitment. These are a yeast donut, so from start (I am craving a donut) to end (yum!), it took about 3 hours–bleh. Alternatively, I could have driven out to the nearest Krispy Kreme (and devoured half a dozen donuts) and returned home in the time it took me to just make the donut dough.

A note on yeast doughs: you always need a warm, draft-free place to allow your dough to rise. My favorite place is my oven! Preheat your oven to it’s lowest setting–mine is 170º. Once it’s heated, turn the oven off and start making the dough. A nice warm, draft-free space for your dough to happily rise. And most importantly to me: it’s a place my puppies can’t get into! Be sure to use an oven-proof (no plastic!) container… and make sure your container is large enough for the rising process, or else you’ll go from this…

I used my KitchenAid mixer. In the mixer bowl, combine warm (it should be on the hotter side, but not scalding) water and yeast. Let it dissolve for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat milk for about 2 minutes in the microwave. Remove and let it cool.

Add milk, sugar, salt, eggs, butter, and 2 cups of flour to the bowl of yeast.

Mix for 2 minutes at medium speed. Add the remaining 3 cups of flour and continue mixing dough. Continually scrape down the sides.

Place dough in a large greased bowl. Cover loosely with a clean clothe and let rise in a warm, draft-free place for about 1 to 2 hours or until doubled.

Roll dough out on a floured surface to about ¼ inch thickness. Cut into doughnuts using a donut cutter or cookie cutter about one 1-inch and one 3 or 4-inch. Let stand for about 10 minutes.

Heat oil until it reaches 375º. I used a deep fryer. If pan frying, make sure you have around 3 inches of oil in your pan.

Carefully drop doughnuts into hot oil, only a few at a time. Fry, turning once, for about 3 minutes or until golden brown. Drain on prepared paper towels.

For the glaze: melt butter and stir in powdered sugar and vanilla extract until everything comes together. Add milk until you have reached the desired consistency. Dip doughnuts in glaze and let it drip on the rack.

Alternatively, you could dip your donuts in a mixture of cinnamon-sugar (1 teaspoon of cinnamon for 1/2 cup of sugar).

I love Sunday brunches in Philly. Even though I try to visit a new place every time I go out to brunch, there’s something about Green Eggs Cafe that keeps me coming back. It’s probably because of their red velvet pancakes. If you’ve ever gone to Green Eggs, you know that their pancake portions are GINORMOUS. I could never finish an entire plate, so whenever I go, I usually split the kids size version with friends as a brunch “appetizer” in true tubby fashion. And more importantly, my favorite brunch food is Eggs Benedict and I can never turn down Green Eggs’ extensive eggs benny menu (seriously, what kind of tubby would I be to say no to Pork Belly or Chicken & Waffles Eggs Benedict?! Mmm…) so all the more reason to get the kiddie size!

These pancakes are surprisingly easy to make. The batter is fairly simple and although I’m guilty of using Bisquick every now and then making these from scratch is totally worth it!

The only tricky part is “stuffing” the pancakes with chocolate. After pouring half the pancake batter onto a hot skillet, I quickly put a handful of mini chocolate chips before pouring on the remaining pancake batter. You have to work fairly quickly so the pancake cooks evenly. Another note: generally, the rule is to wait until you see bubbles appearing on the pancake’s surface before flipping. I didn’t want the pretty red pancakes to burn, so I flipped it a little earlier. Give it around two minutes!

When all the pancakes were done, I layered them with a strawberry mascarpone and topped off the stack with fresh strawberries and some whipped cream. Green Eggs serves theirs with maple syrup but I don’t think they need the extra sugar!

I’m fairly certain that lamb and rosemary are food BFFs. Well, okay, that’s a lie–rosemary and garlic are the real best friends and sometimes they like to hang out with lamb and when that happens, IT IS MAGICAL. Guys, I’m being serious.

For whatever tubby-induced reason (ok it was mostly because lamb is always delicious), I decided to make lamb chops for dinner. Shout out to Zach for fueling my lamb cravings and sending me the original recipe!

I’m just going to shut up now and let you begin drooling on your keyboards. Start with rosemary, thyme, garlic, cayenne, and salt in a food processor.

Mix until coarsely chopped and add olive oil. Rub marinade on both sides of lamb chops. Giada’s original recipe says you should let this marinate for about an hour. I didn’t have an hour (read: I was impatient AKA really hungry) and only waited 30 minutes. It was still aaaaamazing.

While the lamb chops marinated, I cubed up a butternut squash and sprinkled some light brown sugar, salt, and pepper over it with a little bit of olive oil. This went into a 425º oven for 25 minutes.

After 30-60 minutes (or until you’re so hungry you can’t wait any longer, like me), heat a grill pan. Get. It. Really. Hot. Like Ryan Gosling smokin’ hot. Add the lamb chops and sear for ~3 minutes until they look like these babies below. Flip and sear the other side for another 3 minutes. At this point, your kitchen smells like what I imagine heaven smells like… try not to drool all over your beautiful lamb chops. If you MUST eat something due to your uncontrollable starvation, eat the slightly burnt, super crispy garlicy marinade bits that end up at the bottom of the pan… and you must.

All done!

Lamb chops and butternut squash… uggggghhhhhh so tubby, so good. My siblings won’t eat butternut squash and I had a little bit of garlic-rosemary-thyme marinade leftover, so I used it to coat some fingerling potatoes and threw those in the oven at 425º for 50 minutes. You can see a baby potato peeking out in the picture below.

Aaaaand. If you have potatoes/butternut squash leftovers (I intentionally made extra!), make soup! Recipes are below.

Here’s the part where I leave a caveat regarding the accuracy of these recipes. When I’m cooking, I’m not really measuring. I like to guestimate if I’m using a recipe and if I’m making up the recipe on the spot, I’m usually just tasting while I cook… so whoops, it’s not suuuuper precise. You’ve been warned!

AKA the Elvis cupcake. Aaaaand, I’ve decided I’m going to name it the Kris cupcake. Why? Because if/when Michael and I finally open our #BARkery (bar + bakery), we want to name everything we sell after people we know. My friend Kris requested this cupcake back in September and I completely forgot about it until today. It consists of all his favorite things, but let’s be honest–who doesn’t love banana peanut butter sandwiches? And then when you add the bacon… So good!

And ugh I’m sorry (not sorry) but I candied the bacon. CANDIED BACON. Candying bacon was surprisingly way more difficult than I thought it would be. And by “difficult” I meant it was really hard for me to wait and not eat the bacon because candying bacon requires that it bakes in the oven for over 30 minutes… AND THEN when it comes out, you have to wait some more for it to cool down. As it were, I have no patience so… my impatience + bacon that I can’t eat = some form of my own personal, delicious hell. Obviously I snuck a bite… or two… okay ten.

Anyway this is probably one of my favorite cupcakes because like Kris, I love the juxtaposition of salty bacon with sweet banana and savory peanut butter. I’m drooling even though I’ve already had two cupcakes.

Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl – flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

In another bowl, mix egg, brown sugar, sour cream, melted butter, and vanilla. Add mashed bananas. You can mash the bananas separately if you want, but I just threw them into my Kitchenaid and let my mixer do the dirty work.

Scoop into tin. I made mini cupcakes so it only took about 10 minutes for mine to finish.

candied bacon

Mix brown sugar, maple syrup, and cinnamon in a bowl. Add bacon and mix thoroughly, making sure each slice of bacon has a coating of the brown sugar mixture.

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place bacon in strips–I used two baking sheets.

Bake for 30-50 minutes.

Try not to eat the bacon before it’s done candy-ing.

The bacon will be crispy and browned–but not burnt–when it’s ready to come out of the oven. Place the bacon on parchment paper to cool (or else it will cool and stick to itself/the aluminum foil and you do not want to deal with that mess).

Eat. All. The. Bacon. Just kidding, make sure you save some so that you can top your cupcakes!